On Hideous Toe Nails and Moments of Intimacy 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a …
I am flush with gratitude. Each time I turned my face towards you, I beheld so so so many of you out there. At first it felt like I was stealing glances at you. I felt brazen. Then I felt more courageous and eventually more confident. There you were: a full to brimming space, dear …
Preparing for the Ministerial Fellowship Committee: not for the faint-hearted. Besides the whole get a degree thing, and take on additional educational debt, there was the four-page Required Reading List. At five months out, a member of my study group did the math and estimated that we had to read 450+ pages per week to …
Preparing for the Ministerial Fellowship Committee Read More »
Do you know the story of the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams? It is a beloved story about a stuffed animal rabbit, who is decidedly not a toy, but who is not yet real, not until it is loved so hard and so long, that it is made real. I did not grow up with …
Children’s Advice for Seeing the Ministerial Fellowship Committee Read More »
this is the original version of the abbreviated tribute I gave this morning West Cummington Church November 30, 2014 These days I do not much write poems. Instead, I write blogposts and blessings, sermons and lists of assignments to complete by semester’s end. In the time before I really knew Steve, after I had attended …
Tribute to Stephen Philbrick on the Occasion of Twenty Years in Ministry Read More »
“Sexuality is who you go to bed with. Gender identity is who you to bed as.” So sayeth the authors of The GENDER Book at a workshop I attended last night. In the summer and fall of 2010, there was an unprecedented rash of suicide deaths of gender-variant youths in this country. Yes, there are …
The Gender Spectrum: A Workshop, A Blogpost, A Poem Read More »
Not that long ago, I was sitting in an early morning committee meeting, one of my first in my official capacity as an intern minister. I wanted them to know that I value them. I wanted to show them I have valuable skills and insights to offer them. I wanted them to know that …
God keeps popping up at my house. Which is a little strange given that we are a couple of Buddhists. It started this summer, while I was interning as a hospital chaplain, part of the process to form me as a Unitarian Universalist minister. Now, to be a UU minister, I do not have to …
For my new Teaching Parish Committee We are artists, not evaluators… Though there are tools that will be offered, carefully crafted grids for assessment and measurement, guidance for feedback and evaluation, do not be deceived: your task here is not technical. Think guideposts, not guidelines. Think cairns, not cautions. This is …
A Blessing at the Start of a Ministerial Internship Read More »
Twenty-four hours on-call. At the hospital. Not as long as one of my colleagues who this very same weekend is doing forty-eight (yes, two days straight ~ not to mention Monday through Friday on either side). This, apparently, is the life of the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) student. Some of my colleagues spread across the …
From the Land of On-Call: A Day in the Life of a CPE Student Read More »